Sunday 18 February 2018

Evaluation 4

How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?


Video camera (Panasonic HC-V130) - We used this camera to film all of our shots in high quality. The camera allows the user to zoom in and out which allows for a range of camera angles. This allowed us to experiment with the different camera angles to decide which was best. The camera is a lot smaller than traditional/old cameras, this made it a lot easier to film in various locations, at the cost of quality of more expensive cameras which is fine for our product. An example of this is some of the shots in which we didn't use a tripod in order to make it seem like the camera was from the perspective of one of the actors, this would've been a lot more difficult with a larger camera. It was also easy to upload the footage onto the computer to use, as it just requires a cable.



Photoshop - Photoshop was the software I used to create the logo, age rating, poster and magazine cover. It allows for a wide range of features, including: filters, gradients, blurring, burning, sharpening, text, shapes, etc. The feature I used the most was probably the blur tool, this allowed me to manipulate the text so that it looked even more hand drawn than with just the font. It also allowed me to create a smoky border around my magazine cover to make it seem more eerie and that there is more going on. The gradient tool can be used to make an object look darker/lighter (similar to the burn tool) which is good for making an object look as though it is coming out of the darkness behind it. The various filters can be used to make the image look more interesting, for example: I used a monochromatic filter on my magazine background to draw attention to the main image and make it look eerier. The burn tool was also used a lot; I used it to darken the building in my poster and also to make the mask look darker. The eraser and quick select tool are also very useful; they can be used for different things: just removing things, automatically, selecting things and doing something with them, manually removing parts, etc.



Premiere Pro - Premiere Pro was the software we used to edit together our trailer. By importing the various clips and music tracks into the program, we are able to place them and create a video. It also allowed us to watch the product to see what we needed to do to improve it. Another feature is adding text for inter-titles. Also, we were able to place different pieces of audio onto different tracks allowing us to have background music and sound effects. Furthermore, we were able to cut the audio and video tracks when/where we needed. This allowed us to split one clip into various others which is suitable for the thriller genre where multiple clips are required. Any clips we didn't need could easily be gotten rid of too.




Phone - My phone was also very important; phones nowadays can do a lot more than they could a few years ago, they can: take photos, use the internet, send messages/photos, use apps. I mainly used my phone for messaging other group member(s) to try and organise meeting/filming times which is very convenient. This was mainly done through Facebook messenger. I also used the camera to take photos of pieces of work that we had done and that I needed to put onto my blog.



Blogger - Blogger is the website I am using to upload all of my research, planning and products onto. The website makes it very easy to organise each of my posts; it is easy to find what to look for as a result of a suitable title, which is followed by a description/image of what to look for. Furthermore, the design of the site made it easy to use and work on multiple projects at the same time.



YouTube - I used YouTube to upload any videos I needed for my blog. This was done by saving the video in Premiere Pro, and then uploading to Adam's YouTube account so that we could access the video files from anywhere. Blogger also enabled us to embed the video files within a post which was useful for some posts such as the ones showing our draft/final product (trailer). Sometimes this didn't work and a link was needed instead, but this was still more efficient than needing to search for the video.



Word - Word was primarily used to create scripts, such as: for the trailer and as a plan for what to say in our pitch. In addition, it allowed us to easily view the various fonts and decide on which one would be best for our genre/narrative.



Publisher - Publisher was used in different ways. The main way was to crop screenshots of trailers so that they could be saved as an image file and uploaded to my blog. Sometimes, I also used it as an alternative form of analysis for posters to make my blog look more interesting.



PowerPoint - PowerPoint was only used for the pitch of our film. We used it because it allows us to display different subjects on different slides, making it look a lot more organised and interesting than if we just spoke about it.



Facebook - Facebook wasn't used much, rather its messaging service Messenger was. Messenger allows the user to send messages directly to someone or to a whole group. This made organisation a lot easier - as I previously mentioned.



Wordle - I only used Wordle once on my post "Thriller conventions" as I thought it would look more interesting than simply writing them all out.



Strawpoll - Strawpoll was used to poll a group of people as to which design of our title they preferred, and we ended up using the one that got the most votes.


1 comment:

  1. Some good evidence of how you have used youtube, wordle and strawpoll in creating your media Products.

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